New York, New York, United States - Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Monday, April 14, 2014

New York, New York, United States - Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Monday, April 14, 2014
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"This Award is for Snowden": Greenwald, Poitras Accept Polk Honor for Exposing NSA Surveillance
In their first return to the United States since exposing the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance operations, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras were honored in New York City on Friday with the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting. Over the past 10 months, Poitras and Greenwald have played key roles in reporting the massive trove of documents leaked by Edward Snowden. They were joined by colleagues Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, with whom they shared the award. In their acceptance speeches, Poitras and Greenwald paid tribute to their source. "Each one of these awards just provides further vindication that what [Snowden] did in coming forward was absolutely the right thing to do and merits gratitude, and not indictments and decades in prison," Greenwald said. "None of us would be here … without the fact that someone decided to sacrifice their life to make this information available," Poitras said. "And so this award is really for Edward Snowden."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Ten months ago, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald flew from New York to Hong Kong to meet National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Since then, they’ve published a trove of stories exposing the NSA and the national surveillance state. Poitras and Greenwald did not return to the United States until this past Friday, when they flew from Berlin to New York to accept the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting. They flew in not knowing if they would be detained or subpoenaed by the U.S. government. In January, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, described journalists working on the NSA story as Snowden’s, quote, "accomplices." In February, Republican Congressmember Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, accused Glenn Greenwald of selling stolen goods by reporting stories on the NSA documents. Greenwald and Poitras were accompanied on their trip by an ACLU attorney, a German reporter and Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda. Last year, Miranda was detained for nine hours at London’s Heathrow Airport under an anti-terrorism law.
At the George Polk Awards ceremony in New York City Friday, Poitras and Greenwald were joined by their colleagues, Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, who shared the award with them. This is Laura Poitras, followed by Glenn Greenwald, in their acceptance speeches.
LAURA POITRAS: So, I’m really incredibly honored to be here and thankful to the Polk committee for giving me a really good excuse to come home. This is the first time I’ve been home since I boarded a plane with Glenn and Ewen to go to Hong Kong, and so it’s really spectacular to be here. And it’s also quite disorienting. Last May, you know, the field, what we looked at, was a lot of uncertainty, risk, concern for everyone, and so it’s really extraordinary to be here and receive this award. But I think that it’s important also that we remember that when we actually do this reporting, the enormous risks that journalists take on and especially that sources take on, and in the case of Snowden, putting his life on the line, literally, to share this information to the public, not just the American public, but to the public internationally.
And we—I want to say something about working with Glenn and Ewen. People—you don’t really know how people will respond to risk, until you’re confronted with it. You know, you hope that you’ll stand up and that you’ll have each other’s back, and that those will be the people who will protect you and get you home safely. And I just want to say that this award would not be possible without their courage and bravery and fierce reporting every step of the way. And we were, as Ewen said, untested working together. We had each had our areas of expertise, but we got on the plane having never worked together and did something and worked together in a way that was really extraordinary, and I’ll forever be bound to them.
None of us would be here—Bart, Ewen, Glenn, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, all the people who are being offered these awards—without the fact that someone decided to sacrifice their life to make this information available. He’s not the first person who’s sacrificed their life, but he came forward with information that allows us to know what’s actually happening. And so this award is really for Edward Snowden. Thank you.
GLENN GREENWALD: First of all, thank you so much to the Polk committee and Long Island University for this award. The reporting that we’ve done has received a lot of support and a lot of praise and the like, but it’s also received some very intense criticism, primarily in the United States and the U.K. And so, to be honored and recognized by our journalistic colleagues this way—speaking for myself, at least—means a great deal. I’m also really honored to be able to share the award with the people that I call my journalistic colleagues, who are on stage here with me, the people that James Clapper calls "accomplices." You know, it really is true that the story could not have been told without numerous people, committed to telling it, involved every step of the way.
And I’m finally really happy to see a table full of Guardian editors and journalists whose role in this story was much more integral than the publicity generally recognizes. I mean, I think it’s easy to look back now and think this is so obviously such an incredibly important journalistic story and to think that any editor or newspaper would simply dive right in and want to aggressively tell the story, but it really wasn’t true. Back in those early days of Hong Kong, there were all kinds of very grave question marks hanging over the source, the material, the legal liability, the political reaction. And I’m so happy that I was part of an institution at The Guardian staffed with incredibly intrepid editors and reporters. Ewen named a few of them—many of them, but certainly leading the list is Janine Gibson and Stuart Millar and Alan Rusbridger, who really never flinched in not only allowing us, but pushing us and encouraging us to pursue the story as fearlessly and aggressively as possible. And I really believe that the reporting could not have happened, the way that at least I thought that it should happen, had it not been for The Guardian. So I certainly consider them an integral part of this award.
Just one final point, which is that when we were in Hong Kong, we actually spent, obviously, a great deal of time talking about surveillance policies and the documents and the like, but we also spent at least as much time, if not more so, talking about issues of media and journalism. And in part, that was because we knew that how the media treated this story would be a major part of how—of what the impact was; in part, we knew that it was because the debate that we hoped to trigger was not just one about surveillance, but about the proper role of journalism and the relationship between the media and the government or other factions that wield great power. But we also knew that we were doing this reporting in the context of what already was some pretty grave threats to the news-gathering process, in terms of the unprecedented attacks on whistleblowers by the Obama administration, as well as the controversy that had happened literally weeks before we began publishing, which was the trolling through AP and phone—emails and phone records of AP reporters and editors, and then formally declaring James Rosen of Fox News a, quote, "co-conspirator" for having done what journalists do every single day, which is work with their source to gather information that the public should know. And I think it’s important to recognize how intensified those threats became over the last nine or 10 months.
There are ways to intimidate journalists. You can imprison them en masse, but there are other ways to do it. And calling journalists working on stories "accomplices," or having powerful chairmen of committees specifically accuse journalists of being criminals and advocating for their prosecution, or having major media figures openly debate whether we ought to be prosecuted is a way to intensify that climate of fear, as is detaining my partner or marching into The Guardian's newsroom and forcing them to destroy those laptops. And I think, ultimately, the only way to deal with those kind of threats is to just do the reporting as aggressively, if not more so, than you would have absent those threats. And I feel like all of the journalists involved in this story have done that, and I'm really proud to have worked with so many who did.
And then, finally, you know, I think journalism in general is impossible without brave sources. I know our journalism, in particular, would have been impossible without the incredible courage of Edward Snowden. And it’s really remarkable that the reporting that we’ve done has won all sorts of awards, not just in the United States, but around the world, and he, in particular, has received immense support, incredible amounts of praise from countries all over the world and all sorts of awards, and the fact that for the act of bringing to the world’s attention this system of mass surveillance that had been constructed in the dark, he’s now threatened with literally decades in prison, probably the rest of his life, as a result of what the United States government is doing, I think, is really odious and unacceptable. And I hope that, as journalists, we realize how important it is not only to defend our own rights, but also those of our sources like Edward Snowden. And I think each one of these awards just provides further vindication that what he did in coming forward was absolutely the right thing to do and merits gratitude, and not indictments and decades in prison. Thanks very much.
AMY GOODMAN: Journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, giving their acceptance speeches at the George Polk Awards ceremony in New York on Friday—the George Polk Awards, among the most prestigious in journalism. When we come back, we’ll air excerpts of the news conference after the ceremony. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute. 
"We Won't Succumb to Threats": Journalists Return to U.S. for First Time Since Revealing NSA Spying
Ten months ago, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald flew from New York to Hong Kong to meet National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Poitras and Greenwald did not return to the United States until this past Friday, when they flew from Berlin to New York to accept the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting. They arrived not knowing if they would be detained or subpoenaed after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described journalists working on the NSA story as Snowden’s "accomplices." At a news conference following the George Polk Award ceremony, Poitras and Greenwald took questions from reporters about their reporting and the government intimidation it has sparked.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Music from the album The Celestial Green Monster by Fred Ho, the baritone saxophonist, composer, bandleader, writer and activist. Ho passed away Saturday after a long battle with cancer. He was 56 years old. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
After winning the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting on Friday in New York, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras held a news conference along with Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill. The three of them were the reporters NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden met with last June in Hong Kong. Poitras and Greenwald flew in from Berlin for the ceremony, arriving midway. The reporters in the room did not know what would happen. Democracy Now! attended the news conference after the ceremony. Greenwald and Poitras began by responding to a question about whether they were worried about getting detained or arrested entering the United States Friday for the first time since they started working on the NSA story.
GLENN GREENWALD: We weren’t so worried that we weren’t willing to get on the plane. I mean, if we were really worried, we wouldn’t have come. There was no need for us to come. But we knew, certainly, that it was a risk.
I mean, I think the important thing to realize about this is that American national security officials and other officials in the government have deliberately created an environment where they wanted us to think there was a risk. They have very deliberately and publicly suggested that the journalism we were doing was a crime. They have advocated that we be arrested. They have had their favorite media figures openly speculate about the possibility that we would be. They detained my partner for nine hours. They announced that there was a terrorism investigation pending in the U.K., and they refused to give my lawyers any information at all about whether there was a grand jury investigation, whether there was an indictment under seal—very unusual behavior when dealing with these lawyers, in particular, who say that they can always get at least something.
So they wanted us to have this kind of uncertainty about whether or not they would take action upon our return to the U.S. That’s very clear. And it’s easy, I guess, to say it doesn’t seem likely that it will happen, but when those threats are being directed at you, you take them seriously. And so we did, but then, obviously, assessed that the risk was low enough, mostly because we didn’t think that they would be so counterproductive or self-destructive to do it, and were willing, therefore, to get on a plane and come back.
REPORTER: And those conversations about the indictment, how long—or if there was an indictment or grand jury out, how long did those conversations go on?
GLENN GREENWALD: We’ve been trying to get information from the government about whether or not we could safely return to the U.S. for at least four to five months. And originally, the government said that they were willing to have conversations about what that might entail, and then, ultimately, I guess, decided that they weren’t willing to have those conversations, because they just stopped returning calls and stopped giving any information. And so, they just expressly refused to say whether or not there were—whether there was a pending indictment under seal or whether or not we were the targets of a grand jury investigation.
AMY GOODMAN: Your trip isn’t over. It doesn’t just have to happen at the airport. What are you concerned about, for both Glenn and Laura? And, Laura, if you could describe how your experience coming through the airport today compared with your previous experiences?
LAURA POITRAS: Sure. I mean, you know, the other risk that I think that we face as journalists right now are the risk of subpoena, where the government subpoenas our material to try to get information about our source. And we know that the government has been using the border as a sort of legal no man’s land to get access to journalists’ materials. I mean, I’ve experienced that for six years, where I’ve been detained, interrogated and had equipment seized at the border, and never told, you know, for what reason that’s happening. So—
AMY GOODMAN: How many times have you been stopped?
LAURA POITRAS: You know, I’ve asked the government to answer that question, and they won’t tell me. I think close to 40 or more. I’ve got FOIAs out, and soon as I can get a precise count, I’ll certainly publish it. So, I mean, the risks of subpoena are very real. And as—you know, as you indicate, I mean, the fact that we’re here is not an indication that there isn’t a threat. We know there’s a threat. We know there’s a threat from what the government is saying in terms how they’re talking about this journalism, the journalism that we’re doing. And, I mean, the reason we’re here is because we’re not going to, you know, succumb to those threats.
AMY GOODMAN: What are your plans for the United States? Will you be staying here long? Glenn, will you be moving back? Laura, will you be moving back?
GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, I think—you know, I think that this first step—I mean, since we didn’t know what today held, we haven’t been doing a lot of long-term thinking, because we had no idea what the outcome would be of our deplaning. But I think that once we got on the airplane this morning, it was a commitment not just to come back for this one time, but to come back whenever we want, which is our prerogative as American citizens. And it ought to be our right, not just to come back, but to come back without fear of that kind of harassment, to even have that enter our thought process.
So I don’t know what Laura’s long-term plans are, I mean, but for me, you know, I have a book coming out next month, and I want to be able to come to the U.S. to talk about the issues that it raises. I have a lot of journalistic colleagues here with whom I’m working. I want to be able to freely travel to work with them and work on stories in the United States and to talk about the things I think we need to be talking about. So I do think this sort of presages more visits to the U.S. for me.
LAURA POITRAS: I mean, I started working outside of the United States and setting up my edit studio in Berlin before I was contacted by Snowden, and because of the sort of repeated targeting that I had at the border, and so this was the decision I had made before working on the NSA material. And for me, the decision is: I don’t feel confident I can protect source material in the United States right now. I mean, it’s just—I certainly can’t cross a border with it or with my equipment or anything that I consider to be sensitive. And so, my plan is to finish editing and then return. I mean, I absolutely plan to return.
REPORTER: What worries each of you the most about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, what worries me is the fact that it doesn’t have any of the attributes that we’re taught as first-year law students, or even as American citizens, make a court an actual court. It operates in complete secrecy. There’s only one side allowed to be heard, which is the government. And it even for a long time was housed in the Justice Department, indicating what its real purpose is, which is not to be an outside body exerting oversight, but to be an enabler of what the executive branch wants to do. And the proof is in the pudding, in that there’s been 30 years of FISA court decisions and an infinitesimal, humiliatingly small number of demands by the U.S. government to surveil that have been even modified, let alone rejected, by that court. So it’s purely fictitious, the idea that it exerts any real oversight over the surveillance regime.
AMY GOODMAN: What has been your latest communication with Edward Snowden? What is he—what are his concerns now and where he stands in Russia?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I mean, you know, I don’t think it’s any secret that I talk to him regularly. And, you know, I feel like a lot of what we do has an impact on him, because things—just choices that we make can have an influence on how he’s perceived or even what his legal situation is. So, you know, we certainly talked about our plans to come back, and he was very supportive of that.
And, you know, I think that his situation in Russia is what it’s basically been for the last eight months, which is that he’s in a country that he didn’t choose to be in, that he was forced to remain in by the United States revoking his passport and then threatening other countries not to allow him safe transit. But at the same time, that alternative, as imperfect as it might be, is certainly preferable to the alternative of not being in Russia, which is being put into a supermax prison in the United States for the next 30 years, if not the rest of his life. And so, given how likely of an outcome that was, and he knew that was when he made his choice, I think he’s very happy with his current situation.
REPORTER: Do you know what kind of—whether he’s still—whether he’s actively being pursued now? It seems like recently he’s been speaking a lot, speaking out a lot more, like giving telepresence talks. Does he feel safer?
GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, you know, I think his—I mean, it’s really kind of an extraordinary thing that’s sort of been underappreciated, the fact that he made the choice to go before the world and say that this leak, which is the largest national security leak in American history, the one that has made the American national security state angrier than any other, "is something that I did. And I’m not only saying that I did it, but I want to tell you my rationale for why I did it, and I’m proud of it." And, you know, eight months later, he is further away from the grasp of the United States than he has ever been. And, you know, I think that he feels not just a duty, but a sort of a responsibility, to participate in the debate that he helped to trigger around the world. And the fact that he’s able to do that is one of the reasons why I think it’s so important that he hasn’t been in prison. I don’t think he’s ever going to feel safe, but I think he feels confident enough to be speaking out, and especially because he feels like the focus will remain on the revelations and not on him personally.
REPORTER: What’s the most important revelation, do you think, that came from all the documents that were released because of Edward Snowden?
GLENN GREENWALD: For me, the most significant revelation is the ambition of the United States government and its four English-speaking allies to literally eliminate privacy worldwide, which is not hyperbole. The goal of the United States government is to collect and store every single form of electronic communication that human beings have with one another and give themselves the capacity to monitor and analyze those communications. So, even though I’ve been warning for a long time about this being an out-of-control, rogue surveillance state, long before I ever heard the name Edward Snowden, to see in the documents that that not only is their ambition, but something that they’re increasingly close to achieving, was, to me, by far the most significant goal, something that I don’t think anyone in the world knew or understood. And every other revelation is really just a subset of that one.
REPORTER: And just to follow up, do you think that nuclear terrorism or any of the threats against the United States would justify that kind of searching of the world? I mean, would we want a nuclear terrorist to go off in New York?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, I mean, I don’t—no, I don’t think that the desire to detect what a small number of people are doing justifies ubiquitous, mass, suspicionless surveillance. And I actually think that the system that says collect everything makes it actually harder to find the things that they claim they’re looking for, because when you collect so much, it’s really impossible almost to find the Boston Marathon attack or the attempted detonation of a bomb in Times Square, any of the other things that the surveillance state, as ubiquitous as it is, failed to detect.
REPORTER: The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. What is the future of whistleblowing?
GLENN GREENWALD: Do you want to—
LAURA POITRAS: Well, I mean, I think—I’m not going to go into too many details, but I think what we’re seeing is actually more people coming forward, you know, more people realizing that they—that their conscience is telling them that there are things that they know of that should be public. And I can’t go into lots of details. I mean, one that is—actually has been reported was a story that Glenn did with Jeremy Scahill, which was on the targeted killing program and how they’re using metadata to assassinate people without actually knowing the identities of the people. And that came—that information was—that was a source that came forward. So I think, you know, we’re—I mean, I think, you know, in this sort of post-9/11 era, I think there are a lot of people who have sort of a heavy conscience over what has happened and who have a lot of information. And I think that maybe the risk that Snowden has taken opens up a space where people will maybe feel that now is the time to come forward.
MIKE BURKE: What tips do you have for journalists working in the United States regarding securing their data and communications with sources?
LAURA POITRAS: OK, so—and you’re talking about people who are doing like national security reporting? So, I’m on—Glenn and I are both on the board of an organization called the Freedom of the Press Foundation. We just published a blog about a tool that’s called Tails, which is a operating system that runs on a—either USB stick or SD disc, that is a sort of all-in-one encryption tool that you can use for PGP and encryption [inaudible]. And it’s just quite—it’s just really secure. And we are—we didn’t talk about it for a long time, because we didn’t necessarily want to draw attention to it, so that it would be—avoid being targeted. But we figured, by now, the intelligence agencies who are paying attention would sort of—it would be on their radar. So, it’s actually—it’s a really important tool for journalists.
And I think there are huge concerns for international journalists and their communications and how they protect sources, and that these revelations have exposed. So, for instance, information that’s foreign information that’s transited to the United States gets sucked up, and so how are you going to protect your sources? And how do intelligence agencies behind the scenes share information? And those are all the—these are all things that I think will continue to come forward as more sources come forward and more reporting is done. And, yeah.
REPORTER: How do you feel the U.S. public has reacted? And do you feel like there’s been a sufficient amount of reaction from the U.S. public?
GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, I think the number of people in this room, 10 months after we first did our reporting, is a testament to how much the story has resonated. And, you know, because I live outside the United States, I think I’m probably a little bit more attentive to how it has resonated internationally, which sometimes I think gets lost in the debate in the United States. But really, I mean, literally around the globe, people think not only about surveillance, but about individual privacy in a digital age and the trustworthiness of government officials to exercise power in the dark and the proper role of journalism vis-à-vis the state, and a whole variety of other topics, including the role that the United States government is playing in the world, in a radically different light than they did prior to this reporting. And I—you know, I see the impact when I go other places and talk about the story, how much it continues to resonate.
And I know I’ve said this before over many months, many times, and there’s a little bit of skepticism when I say it in some circles, but I say it because it really is true: In my opinion, the stories that are the most significant and that are the most shocking and that will have the broadest and most enduring implications are the ones that we’re currently working on and have not yet been reported. And so, I think it’s really hard to assess while we’re still in the middle of the story, which is really where we are, what the ultimate consequences will be. I don’t think we know. But, for me, of course, there’s some indifference or some apathy. There’s some jaded, you know, sort of cynicism. But in general, the public reaction has been, speaking for myself, just vastly larger and more consequential than even in my wildest dreams I imagined could happen when I started working on the story.
AMY GOODMAN: Edward Snowden just warned that the U.S. government is surveilling human rights groups in the United States. Can you, any of you, address this, what you know about this, from the documents, and to U.S. just refusing to give Chancellor Merkel her NSA file?
GLENN GREENWALD: I’ll only break news on Democracy Now!, as you know, but not at press conferences. But, no, I mean, you know, as I said, I mean, I think some of the most significant stories are left to come, and it’s hard to preview them when they haven’t gone through the journalistic process and to talk about ones that we haven’t published. But obviously, Edward Snowden is aware of what’s in the material that he gave us. And so, when he describes what the surveillance state is doing, I think it should be deemed pretty reliable, since everything else that he said about that has proven to be true. And I believe that will, as well, without sort of talking about the reporting that we’re doing.
LAURA POITRAS: I mean, working in Germany, I mean, as we all know, the history of the Stasi in Germany makes this country very, very sensitive to these kinds of invasions of privacy and very aware of their corrosive and pernicious effects when you have governments that surveil their own populations. And so, you have that, and then you’re also balancing the sort of global politics of allies and how—I mean, the government there, I think, is deeply, deeply, deeply concerned about the spying that’s happening there, and they’re trying to, you know, really, I think, investigate that. And I also think, though, there are a lot of things in which the BND is working with the NSA. And so, I think it’s too soon to say what’s going to happen there.
SAM ALCOFF: A lot of the focus has been on the government and the NSA. Would Booz Allen Hamilton, as private clients—is there any reason to believe that they shared any of the vast troves of information they had with private clients?
GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, it’s—you know, I think it’s hard for us to talk about things that we haven’t actually reported, because it just wouldn’t be a meaningful way to talk about it, because the reporting that we do—oftentimes you read a document, and you think you know the meaning of it, and then you go and do your research and read other documents and consult with experts, and it turns out that the understanding that you had of it originally isn’t the accurate understanding. So I try really hard not just to spout off about things that we haven’t gone through the process of reporting.
Having said that, I will just say that in general the—there almost is no division between the private sector and the NSA, or the private sector and the Pentagon, when it comes to the American national security state. They really are essentially one. And so, to talk about whether or not there are protections on how Booz Allen uses the material versus how the NSA uses it almost assumes, falsely, that there is this really strict separation. They call each other partners because that’s what they are. And they’re indispensable in every way to the national security state, which is why Edward Snowden had access to all these materials, not as an NSA employee, but as a Booz Allen employee.
REPORTER: Any regrets on what you’ve done so far?
GLENN GREENWALD: No, I have none at all. I doubt they do, either. But—
REPORTER: What are your hopes for actual reform in—U.S. surveillance reform, in general?
GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, speaking for myself, I would like to see the debate be about not whether the U.S. should be collecting metadata under a specific provision of the PATRIOT Act, 215, but the broader question of whether or not we want to empower the government to monitor and surveil people who are suspected of absolutely no wrongdoing whatsoever, essentially to engage in mass surveillance. Is that really a proper function of the state? And even beyond just domestically, why should one government, in particular, turn the Internet from what it was intended to be, and its greatest promise, which is a tool of freedom and human exploration and liberation, into the most oppressive tool of human control and surveillance ever known in history?
And so, I don’t think anybody thinks that there’s no legitimate form of surveillance. I think that it’s perfectly legitimate for the government to surveil people about whom there’s evidence, real evidence, to believe and convince a court to believe that they’re engaged in actual wrongdoing, a targeted surveillance of people for whom there’s probable cause or some similar standard. But mass surveillance, suspicionless surveillance, of our private communications, I think, is without any justification whatsoever. And I think the national security state ought to be reined in and converted from a system of mass surveillance into one of targeted surveillance.
REPORTER: Have you yet seen any evidence that other countries have regarded these revelations as "we better up our game"?
GLENN GREENWALD: No. Actually, I think that’s an interesting point, as a matter of fact, is I don’t think any countries—you know, I can’t talk to closed societies like China. I don’t know what, you know, their reactions have been. But I think open governments, open countries, their reaction has not been, "Let’s pull our resources to match and replicate the capabilities of the United States." Instead—it is, instead, "Let’s figure out how to defend ourselves from what essentially is this digital invasion of the privacy of our citizens and our elected leaders." And I know in Brazil, for example, and in Germany, the two countries that probably have been the most affected by the revelations and where the reaction has been most intense, there has been very serious debate and resources devoted to figuring out how to build defenses to protect the sanctity of the privacy of their communications.
AMY GOODMAN: Quickly, your—President Obama renewing the bulk phone record data collection despite calling for some reforms, your response to it?
GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, you know, I think that it’s—you know, President Obama likes to parade around as some sort of, you know, King Solomon figure in between the excesses of the NSA and those who are raising concerns about it, and trying to balance it and come up with some reasonable centrist approach. I mean, that’s generally his political brand. The reality is, is that he’s presided over this out-of-control system for five years and has never expressed a single inclination to rein it in in any way. So the fact that he’s continuing it for as long as he can, I think, is the opposite of surprising. I mean, he is an advocate of this system over which he presided for so many years. I mean, I think he’s one of the obstacles to reform, not a vehicle for it.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, speaking at a news conference on Friday after winning the George Polk Awards—the ceremony took place in New York—for their reporting on Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency. They flew in from Berlin that day. They came in in the midst of the ceremony, not knowing if they would be detained or subpoenaed by the U.S. government when they entered the country. They won the George Polk Award along with Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post. The Pulitzer Prize will be announced today. Greenwald and Poitras recently launched The Intercept along with Jeremy Scahill. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, another George Polk Award winner will talk about the elections in Afghanistan. Stay with us.
Polk Winner on Afghanistan: Slain Journalists, Ghost Polls & Unresolved U.S. Ties to Deaths, Torture
Kabul-based journalist Matthieu Aikins was honored with the George Polk Award on Friday for his Rolling Stone article, "The A-Team Killings," that uncovered "convincing evidence" that a U.S. Army Special Forces unit killed 10 Afghan civilians in Wardak province. Aikins joins us to discuss the latest on his story — as well as recent developments in Afghanistan, from the country’s elections to continued violence that recently killed two journalists.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Fred Ho and Dr. Salim Washington, performing part of "The Black Panther Suite," which Ho also composed, at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, New York. Fred Ho died on Saturday after a long battle with cancer. He was 56 years old. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We end the show with another recipient of the George Polk Award on Friday, Matthieu Aikins. He was honored for his Rolling Stone article, "The A-Team Killings," that uncovered convincing evidence that a U.S. Army Special Forces unit killed 10 Afghan civilians in Wardak province. Aikins spoke Friday at the George Polk Awards ceremony in New York.
MATTHIEU AIKINS: I want to highlight the difficulty in recovering lives that are at the other end of the scale of, you know, what the philosopher Judith Butler calls "grievability," right? Peoples whose lives pass without mourning and for whom thereby the violence against them is legitimized. In Afghanistan, this is the rural, illiterate poor, particularly men who are bearded, you know, conservative. In death, they’re easily labeled Taliban.
AMY GOODMAN: Matthieu Aikins went on to warn about the future of Afghanistan.
MATTHIEU AIKINS: The torture and extrajudicial killing that I wrote about in the story is routine among the Afghan security forces that we’ve trained. We’re leaving behind a gangster state that—gangsters who preside over the largest narco-state in the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Matthieu Aikins at the George Polk Awards ceremony in New York. He won the award as partial results from the presidential vote in Afghanistan show former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah slightly ahead of Ashraf Ghani. Some seven million votes were cast across Afghanistan’s 34 provinces in the April 5th election. Only 500,000 votes in 26 provinces have been counted, and the Independent Election Commission has said the front-runner could easily change as counting continues in the coming days. Full preliminary results are expected by April 24th. If no candidate wins a majority, a runoff will be held in May. The vote heralds the first democratic transfer of power in Afghanistan.
For more on Afghanistan, we go now to Washington, D.C., to talk to Matt Aikins. He just came back from Afghanistan to receive the George Polk Award and heads home soon to Kabul. He recently co-authored a piece with Anand Gopal for Harper’s Magazine headlined "The Ghost Polls of Afghanistan."
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Matthieu. What do you mean, "the ghost polls"? And, by the way, congratulations on your George Polk Award.
MATTHIEU AIKINS: Thank you very much, and thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure to come on.
Well, ghost polls are for the polling stations that open on paper but never actually open in reality. Instead, they’re often taken away by a powerful strongman or warlord figure and stuffed with ballots. So, we observed this in the countryside. We traveled out to this war-torn area outside of Kabul and visited a school, where the polling station was supposed to be. It wasn’t there, but up the hill we found the boxes being stuffed. And this is a story that, you know, I think was repeated across many places in rural Afghanistan, as it was in previous elections. But it was virtually unreported this time, since very few reporters left the capital.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the front-runner right now, Abdullah Abdullah, who previously ran for president against Hamid Karzai? The—he’s the former foreign minister. He’s just ahead of Ashraf Ghani, who also is a former minister of the Karzai government.
MATTHIEU AIKINS: Sure. Well, Abdullah Abdullah was Karzai’s main rival in 2009. In that election, he got close to a third of the vote. He represents a party, a network, that’s associated with the north of the country and the Tajik ethnic group, as opposed to Ghani, who’s more strongly associated with Pashtuns who predominate in the South. But, you know, Abdullah Abdullah, former foreign minister; Ashraf Ghani, World Bank official and also finance minister—both respected technocrats, seem to be personally honest, but they’ve surrounded themselves, out of necessity, with much more dubious figures, people that you could frankly call warlords. In that respect, they don’t really—they’re not that dissimilar from President Karzai himself. And it just speaks to the nature of the political system, which won’t change regardless of who’s elected.
AMY GOODMAN: Matthieu, I wanted to ask you about Anja Niedringhaus, the veteran Associated Press photographer who was shot dead by an Afghan police officer just before the election. She died instantly in the attack near the Pakistani border. Her funeral service was held on Saturday in Germany. She was 48 years old. This is AP Senior Vice President Kathleen Carroll.
KATHLEEN CARROLL: She showed calm while all around was chaos. And I believe that is why her pictures from terrible places resonated with so many people around the world. She found their dignity. She found the quiet, human moments that connected people in great strife to all the rest of us around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Canadian AP reporter Kathy Gannon was shot twice in the same attack, as the two women, the two journalists, sat in the back of a car. She’s receiving medical assistance still. Parish priest Bernd Mueller read out a letter from Gannon at Anja’s funeral service.
BERND MUELLER: "I remember some of your last words. 'I am so happy,' you said. You had decided the pictures you wanted to take. Momo and you talked. You knew just what you wanted. You even said, 'We will send them out on Tuesday. That's the best day,’ you said. Mein Schatz, you were so happy. Your heart knew no bounds, Anja. You couldn’t give enough. You wanted to help everyone. I love you, Schatz."
AMY GOODMAN: That’s parish priest Bernd Mueller at the funeral of Anja Niedringhaus reading out a letter from Kathy Gannon, also injured in the attack that killed Anja. Matthieu Aikins, can you talk about Anja and Kathy?
MATTHIEU AIKINS: Well, they were, you know, extraordinarily accomplished, fearless reporters that we all greatly admired. I didn’t know Anja personally, but I knew Kath—I know Kathy. And, you know, sadly, they’re not the only ones in these last couple months; it’s been a rough couple months for the press corps in Kabul. Another friend of mine, Sardar Ahmad, reporter for AFP, was killed, murdered with his family in the Serena Hotel attack. There was a Swedish-British journalist, Nils Horner, who was shot dead on the street. So, that has buffeted the press corps in Kabul, and we’re all in mourning. But I think it’s also important not to let that mourning close us off from the people of this country. We have to find the commonality between our mourning and the mourning that people in the countryside experience every day for their loved ones who are killed, and not allow this mourning to close us off in our grief.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the death toll in Afghanistan?
MATTHIEU AIKINS: The death toll is rising. You know, last year, there was more civilian casualties than any other year. The violence in the country is not diminishing as international forces leave. It’s diminishing in some areas; it’s increasing in other areas. But I think it sets the pattern for what will continue to be a very intense conflict between Afghan parties.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Aikins, you won the award, the George Polk Award, for your piece in Rolling Stone, "The A-Team Killings." If you could briefly summarize what you exposed, and then talk about the Pentagon’s response to your report?
MATTHIEU AIKINS: Well, you know, as I discussed on the show when you had me on in November, I investigated these allegations that a U.S. Special Forces team had run amok in Wardak province and had been responsible for torturing people, for killing them. Eventually, when the team left, they found these bodies buried outside the base. But the U.S. military had denied any responsibility for these events and had claimed to have done three investigations that exonerated any of their servicemembers. So, that’s—that was our point of departure. And what we found, what we conclusively established in the piece, in my opinion, was that there were very strong—very strong evidence that this team had been responsible for these men’s death, that they’d been seen arresting people who later were found buried outside the base.
AMY GOODMAN: And this took place when?
MATTHIEU AIKINS: This took place over last winter, so it would have been about a year ago.
AMY GOODMAN: And how did you discover this?
MATTHIEU AIKINS: Well, one of the ways that we discovered it was by going out to these very insecure, inaccessible areas, interviewing people. Eventually, I managed to visit one of the translators who had been arrested and was in an Afghan prison. So he was sort of a central figure. And he led to the name of the team and the individuals involved themselves. So, eventually, what I was able to do, by getting photos of the individuals from their Facebook accounts and other sources, and mixing them with images of random Special Forces members that I found online, to create a sort of police lineup, if you will—I printed that out and took it back to these villagers and said, "Well, OK, you know, you say you were tortured by a Green Beret. You say this guy took away your brother, who you later found dead. Can you pick him out of the lineup?" And they did.
AMY GOODMAN: And the Pentagon’s response to your report, Matt?
MATTHIEU AIKINS: The Pentagon has opened a criminal investigation. They said it was ongoing when the report came out. But when the report came out, I had asked about the supposed investigation that they had started, and none of the many, many witnesses or officials that I had spoke to had ever been contacted by the criminal investigation team. However, since then, they have come to Kabul, and they have been interviewing people, witnesses who were connected with these events. So, there actually is some sort of criminal investigation taking place.
The track record for the military on holding their servicemembers accountable for these kinds of war crimes and other, you know, illegal acts is pretty dismal. There’s almost, you know, no one who’s been convicted who didn’t sort of run amok like Sergeant Bales, who went crazy. But actual units who are sort of carrying this out in the line of duty, let’s say, the track record of accountability is very poor. So, it remains to be seen what, if anything, will come out of this in terms of accountability.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you also about that video you broke on Democracy Now! in November. It shows a prisoner being whipped by Afghan security forces, as what appears to be unidentified American military officers looking on. We’re going to play just a short clip. This video is extremely violent and disturbing.
[clip]
AMY GOODMAN: That video, we played in November. When you were here last, you said that the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command was investigating this attack. What’s come of that?
MATTHIEU AIKINS: According to the Army, they’ve completed their investigation and turned the findings over to the unit’s chain of command, which means that they were confirmed, you know, as Americans. And that chain of command is the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. So I’ve contacted them for information about what, if any, action was taken against those individuals who are seen supervising a torture session, and they haven’t gotten back to me yet. And we may have to go to a Freedom of Access of Information Act request, but we’re going to find out and follow up.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, in this last minute that we have, your thoughts about the future of Afghanistan, when the elections will be announced, and what happens next?
MATTHIEU AIKINS: You know, we’re all hopeful that the elections will not descend into some sort of prolonged crisis like they have in the past, that there will be a successful transition to a new president. The stakes are extraordinarily high. But Afghanistan’s problems are very deep-rooted. They’re—it’s one of the largest narco-states in the world. There’s a tremendous urban-rural divide and an insurgency. So, the problems aren’t going to be solved by this election, but hopefully they won’t be exacerbated either.
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Aikins, we want to thank you for being with us, journalist based in Kabul, where he will head back to soon. He just received the George Polk Award Friday for his November 2013 Rolling Stone article, "The A-Team Killings." We’ll link to it at democracynow.org. His recent piece is in Harper’s; it’s called "The Ghost Polls of Afghanistan." Again, the Pulitzer Prizes will be announced today.
Headlines:
Ex-KKK Member Shoots Dead 3 at Jewish Centers in Kansas
Three people have been killed in shootings at two Jewish facilities in Kansas. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan is accused of opening fire inside a Jewish community center and an assisted living home in the town of Overland Park. The suspect reportedly yelled "Heil Hitler" upon his arrest. Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said the attack is being investigated as a hate crime.
John Douglass: "We have a suspect. And again, I would caution everybody to understand suspects are not convicted; suspects are people of interest. This gentleman is in his seventies. He is a white male. He has a beard. And outside of that, there’s not a whole lot I know that I can confirm. We’re investigating it as a hate crime. We’re investigating it as a criminal act. We haven’t ruled out anything. I don’t want to say the terrorism word, but, you know, this is, again, three hours into it. It’s only wise and prudent that we use every resource we have."
The suspect, Frazier Glenn Miller, had been a "grand dragon" as a KKK member. The shooting came on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Ukraine Threatens Military Force to Quell Unrest
Ukraine is threatening to send troops into eastern towns today after a deadline passed for pro-Russian demonstrators to stand down. The protesters have occupied state buildings in a call for breaking off from Ukraine and joining Russia. Ukraine has warned of a full-scale assault to re-take the buildings and end the standoff. At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power accused Russia of orchestrating the unrest.
Samantha Power: "These armed units, some wearing black and orange St. George’s ribbons associated with Russian Victory Day celebrations, raised Russian and separatist flags over seized buildings and have called for referendums and union with Russia. We know who is behind this. Indeed the only entity in the area capable of these coordinated professional military actions is Russia."
A Ukrainian operation could spark a new military incursion by Russia, which has massed tens of thousands of troops on its Ukraine border.
U.N. Climate Panel: World Has Just 15 Years to Avoid Climate Catastrophe
The United Nations’ top environmental panel is warning the world has just 15 years to stave off devastating climate change. In a new report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says countries have taken so long to act that only immediate steps will prevent a climate catastrophe by century’s end. The IPCC says action by individual states has not been enough to tackle the problem, highlighting the need for a binding global treaty in the coming years. Emissions have increased at twice the rate in this century’s first decade than in the last decades of the 20th century. The report says the lowering costs of alternative energies have made transitioning on a mass scale practical and affordable.
Obama Blasts GOP Assault on Voting Rights
President Obama has taken aim at the Republican-led rollback of voting rights with some of his most pointed comments to date. Speaking to the National Action Network in New York City, Obama said voter ID laws and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act have undermined democracy.
President Obama: "The principle of 'one person, one vote' is the single greatest tool we have to redress an unjust status quo. You would think there would not be an argument about this anymore, but the stark simple truth is this: The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago. Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote."
Obama Nominates Budget Director to Head Health and Human Services
President Obama has nominated Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell as the new head of Health and Human Services. Burwell would replace Kathleen Sebelius, who stepped down last week. Burwell appeared with Obama and Sebelius at the White House on Friday.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell: "If confirmed by the Senate, I look forward to carrying on the important work of ensuring that children, families and seniors have the building blocks of healthy and productive lives, whether it’s through implementing the Affordable Care Act, supporting affordable childcare or finding new frontiers to prevent and treat disease."
Senate Republicans are expected to use Burwell’s confirmation hearings to take shots at President Obama’s healthcare law. Sebelius oversaw the law’s troubled rollout but ended her tenure with the administration hitting its enrollment target by signing up more than 7.5 million people for private insurance.
Iran to Challenge U.S. Visa Denial of New U.N. Envoy
The Obama administration is blocking Iran’s new ambassador to the United Nations from entering the United States to take up his post. The White House says it will not grant an entry visa to Hamid Aboutalebi because he allegedly belonged to the group behind the 1979 hostage crisis in Tehran. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced the decision.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "We have informed the United Nations and Iran that we will not issue a visa to Mr. Aboutalebi. We certainly share the intent of the bill passed by Congress, as we have already told the U.N. and Iran that we will not issue a visa. We’ll review the legislation. We’re doing that now. And we will work to address any issues related to its utility and constitutionality. But we share the intent of the bill."
Aboutalebi has previously served as Iran’s ambassador to Belgium, Italy, Australia and the European Union, and has denied playing a direct role in the hostage crisis. Iran has rejected the U.S. decision and says it will bring the matter before the United Nations.
Report: Israel Issues One of Largest West Bank Land Seizures in Years
Israel has seized a new tract of land in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli government has declared around 250 acres in a settlement bloc south of Jerusalem as "state land." The Israeli newspaper Haaretz says it is one of Israel’s biggest land appropriations in years. The move comes amidst U.S. efforts to salvage peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Dozens Killed in Nigeria Bus Bombing
Dozens of people have been killed in a bombing of a bus station in Nigeria. There are at least 35 confirmed dead, but the toll is expected to rise.
Reports: NSA Exploited "Heartbleed" Bug; Obama Issues Exemption on Computer Safety
The National Security Agency has reportedly known of the massive new Internet bug "Heartbleed" for several years — and even adopted it for its own use. Bloomberg News reports the NSA was made aware of Heartbleed in early 2012. The bug leaves private web information open to theft by hackers, including passwords and browsing history. Instead of reporting Heartbleed to repair its flaws, the NSA reportedly started using it as a means to steal passwords. The NSA has denied the report, saying it wasn’t aware of the Heartbleed vulnerability until it became public this month. If confirmed, the use of Heartbleed would apparently fall under a newly revealed exemption for the NSA’s handling of Internet security flaws. According to The New York Times, President Obama has exempted the NSA from disclosing major Internet bugs in cases where "a clear national security or law enforcement need" would justify keeping it secret.
Retiring SEC Attorney: Regulators "Tentative and Fearful" in Pursuing Wall Street
A veteran attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission says his bosses have been too lenient in going after Wall Street banks. Speaking at his retirement party, James Kidney said the SEC has been "tentative and fearful" in going after major financial firms for the reckless polices that caused the 2008 financial crisis. Kidney said: "[The SEC is] an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors. On the rare occasions when enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening."
Residents of Canadian Town Reject Enbridge Tar Sands Pipeline
Residents of a small Canadian town have voted to oppose a major pipeline that would carry crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands. In a referendum-style vote, residents of Kitimat, British Columbia, voted to reject hosting the terminal for the Enbridge corporation’s Northern Gateway pipeline project, which would bring tar sands oil to Canada’s West Coast. The project has sparked protests for standing to cut through sensitive environmental areas and indigenous land. The Northern Gateway is seen as the main back-up option should President Obama reject another tar sands pipeline, the Keystone XL. The Canadian government has final say over the Northern Gateway, with a decision expected in mid-June.
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